Dinesh D'Souza - ZELENSKY’S TURN Dinesh D’Souza Podcast Ep1150

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Aug. 19, 2025 - Dinesh D'Souza

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ZELENSKY’S TURN Dinesh D’Souza Podcast Ep1150

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	When the administration is trying to dig us out of a deep hole, it's difficult for them to take your personal finances into account.
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	Coming up, I'll review the Trump Zelensky meeting and outline a way for the negotiations between Putin and Zelensky to proceed.
	I wonder whether AI will produce a new industrial revolution in which robots and software do most of our work for us.
	What are the implications of that?
	And Carmen Maria Montiel, she's former Miss Venezuela, Miss South America, now running for political office in Texas.
	She joins me.
	We're going to talk about redistricting and how red candidates, conservatives, can win in blue districts.
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	is the Dinesh D'Souza Podcast.
	America needs this voice.
	The times are crazy.
	In a time of confusion, division, and lies.
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	This is the Dinesh de Souza podcast.
	Debbie and I were in Los Angeles this past weekend.
	It was a really nice getaway.
	Well, we were doing an event out there with our friends at Prager U and also collaborating on some projects, some upcoming projects with those guys.
	So it was a terrific meeting, but at the same time we took a couple of days to hang out and as we were making our dinner plans, we notice these Waymo's on the street.
	What's a Waymo?
	Well, Waymo is owned by Google.
	It is essentially a taxi cab without a driver.
	And so we see these cars, and there are apparently about three hundred of them in LA.
	It's an experimental program, they're only in Austin and LA.
	They might be in one or two other places, but they're where Atlanta?
	Debbie says Atlanta.
	But it's quite a sight, and you notice people's heads turn when they see these things because it is strange in our lifetime to see a car without a driver.
	Now we might be familiar.
	I've been in Teslas with people and they're like, Oh, watch me as I take my hands off the wheel.
	And you know, you're going to see the car drive itself, but guess what?
	There's a guy behind the wheel who can obviously hit the brake or make a turn as need be.
	It's a whole different thing when you see a car, no driver.
	And so Debbie's like, let's book a Waymo.
	And I'm like, What are you nuts?
	Are you suicidal?
	Debbie goes, No, no, no.
	We're only going to dinner.
	It's only like a mile away or half a mile away.
	It's going to be pretty safe.
	We're not like going on the highway.
	We're not going to the airport.
	Let's try it.
	So we do.
	We download the app and you call the Waymo and it's kind of cool because the car pulls up, no driver, and the doors click open, which you kind of release them through your app as you walk in, Hello, Dummy, thank you for joining us.
	Put on your seatbelt.
	And off the car goes, driving, navigating, making turns, giving signals, the whole thing, and very cautious, very measured.
	We never felt unsafe in the slightest, and then we decided, let's take a Waymo back.
	So it was quite a thrill, really, but it got me thinking about the fact that, and Dubby and I like looked at each other, we're like, this is actually kind of the future of driving, right?
	Cab drivers should take notice because there's going to come a day it's probably not too far away when we could have thousands of automobiles on the street without drivers.
	And I'm not just talking about you know, you could have taxis like that, but you could also have people owning cars and you send your car to achieve something.
	Oh, I'd like to pick you up at the airport.
	Hey, my car will be there.
	I won't be there, but my car will come get you.
	You can jump in it.
	And by the way, you don't have to drive at home either because the car will drive us home.
	So it's crazy.
	AI is really going to change the world.
	And I think as I think it through, it's going to be maybe the biggest change that we have seen since the great communications revolution of the second half of the nineteenth century.
	In other words, a change, I think, over time, nothing happens over a year or two or even five years.
	But as I think of Danielle and Brandon's life and then, of course, Marigold and Winston's life, which is to say the life of the grandchildren, it's going to be.
	a very different world.
	I was thinking ahead to things like, you know, does it make sense for somebody of Marigolda Winston's generation to go to college in the way that we've thought of college?
	And if you go to college, what are you supposed to learn?
	And isn't it a fact that pretty much anything that you can think of that you want to learn could be done by AI or by robots?
	Notice it's not a choice of one or the other.
	The robots supply the physical component, the AI supplies the intellectual component.
	So I see online there are various lists of the type of jobs that could be made obsolete by AI.
	I have a list right here.
	Number one, data entry clerks, number two, telemarketers, number three, customer service representatives, cashiers, fast food and restaurant frontline workers, proofreaders and copy editors, paralegals and legal assistants, bookkeepers, warehouse workers, entry level market research analysts.
	Now, in some ways, I think this kind of a list, although obviously valid, is utterly misleading.
	It's misleading because it gives you the idea, in fact, I read on the list and go, Well, I mean, I'm none of those things, so it's no problem.
	But the truth of it is that pretty much anything that you can think of, you want to be a lawyer, there's no reason to believe that legal briefs in their entirety can't be composed by AI.
	And better ones than a typical lawyer would write.
	Why?
	Because AI is able to ransack the entire knowledge of the Internet.
	And to the degree that that knowledge can then be processed, packaged, and framed in the most effective way, in a way, AI surpasses the human IQ.
	And if you doubt that that's true, just go back to the great chess match between Gary Kasparov at the time the world champion and Deep Blue.
	This was twenty years ago.
	AI was much more primitive, and yet Deep Blue beat Kasparov pretty easily, and since then really computers have surpassed humans in terms of the ability to do a purely intellectual task, namely to play chess.
	There's no reason to believe that AI can't make movies.
	And by that, I mean not just that AI supplies some footage.
	By the way, in our new film coming out in the fall, you'll see that we are kind of on the frontier of all this.
	We have incorporated some kind of elements or touches of AI, and it's very effective.
	It gives a certain kind of consistency of texture to moving images in the film, and it synthesizes with all the stuff that we shot ourselves.
	So we're using AI, and we have the comforting idea that AI is a tool, the more you use it, but it's not going to displaplace humans because after all humans are the ones who have to run the AI.
	I think all of this is true in the short to medium term, but not true in the long term.
	In the short to medium term, you need a doctor and he's going to have to look over the AI, which is doing, you know, may provide the surgical probe and the AI might actually even maneuver the surgery itself, but the doctor's over there to make sure everything's going well.
	But a day will come, and I don't think it's all that far off, when the AI is actually better than the doctor.
	You don't need the doctor.
	In fact, you probably need the AI to make sure the doctor, if he's even there.
	Because the AI knows better than the doctor, the AI can actually do things more quickly and more accurately.
	Debbie gave an example, which I think is not that far off.
	You have a murder scene, a robot shows up powered by AI, the robot takes DNA at the scene and immediately identifies the suspect.
	Not by going back and running laboratory searches and test tubes and coming back three months later, which is pretty much the case now.
	DNA moves ultimately slowly because it's pass a whole different thing when AI and robotics enters this picture full on.
	And so the spectre that I think is worth thinking about is what happens when a large number and I would say the majority of all human tasks that are done now from and I'm not distinguishing between blue collar and white collar tasks.
	There's no difference.
	It's not as if AI is going to go after the blue collar jobs but save the white collar jobs or some people think the opposite.
	Hey, by the way, you know, make sure that your son studies, you know, plumbing and electrical work because after all.
	After all, that can't be done by AI.
	Oh really?
	No, yes, it can.
	It would be think of it.
	You could have a plumber show up.
	It's actually a robot powered by AI.
	This guy fixes your toilet, fixes the plumbing in your house, and off he goes.
	By the way, in his self driven car, if it's not a Waymo that he took to get to your house.
	So all of this is a way of saying that I think quite fundamental changes are coming.
	Now, are these scary in some respect?
	Yeah, perhaps, but I also think that a kind of age of abundance is ahead of us.
	Because think of it, right now the amount of corn that can be produced is limited by the number of farmers.
	Right now the number of cars that can be produced is limited obviously by the amount of metal, but also by the number of people who can work the assembly line.
	But imagine if you can get an unlimited amount of minerals out of the ground and you can make an unlimited amount of cars because you have an unlimited amount of robots who are doing that work and they're doing it increasingly more cheaply and more quickly.
	What does that do to the price of cars?
	To me, it drives the price of cars down, down and down further.
	So I view AI as something that is a transformative technology.
	I mean, look, the railroads were a transformative technology in the 19th century, and what was really transformative was the combination.
	It wasn't one thing, it was the railroads plus the telegraph, plus the phone, plus later the car, and then the airplane.
	So you put those five things together, that has been the biggest communications revolution in human history.
	Those five things put together really changed the United States from an agricultural society into a modern industrial society.
	And what I'm suggesting is that the combination of AI and robotics could we could be seeing.
	a change in the next ten, maybe twenty five years that is no less fundamental, no less dramatic.
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	I want to talk about the meeting yesterday between Trump and Zelenskyy.
	And as you know, Zelenskyy didn't come alone, he brought a troop of European leaders, members of the EU.
	He brought Kirstarmer from Great Britain.
	He brought the guy from Germany, Mertz.
	He brought Georgia Maloney.
	So this was really a remarkable scene.
	Now Debbie was watching an interview.
	Trump, I guess, called in to Fox and he was talking about all these and it was an amazing sight, right?
	We're so accustomed to these European leaders like waving their finger and and hectoring Trump and talking about how they're going to undermine Trump.
	And here they were all like sitting obediently in a circle.
	Trump is right at the center and and they were all cow towing to a degree to Trump.
	Trump speaking about this on Fox keeps talking about the United States and this is Trump's phrase as they all know that we are the hottest, the hottest country.
	He doesn't mean that it's like really hot in the summer.
	No, he means we're hot like Sydney Sweeney hot.
	Like we're hot.
	We're the hottest country.
	We're the sexiest country.
	We're the coolest country.
	We are the country everybody wants to come to.
	And there was a kind of you couldn't help like chuckling at this because then Trump goes on to say, he goes, oh yeah, he goes, you know, I'm dealing with this war.
	But you know, I've already like solved like seven wars.
	So again, this is, and I'm particularly amused by all this because I've been talking about Reagan who had, of course, the self-deprecating style, a real contrast with Trump style.
	But this is a this is a case where where this meeting was, I think, very good, a very good sign of Trump's diplomacy in action, the art of the deal.
	Now, when Trump met with Putin, you had all this wailing and gnashing of teeth, oh, Trump's not going to get anything done.
	The meeting was a failure.
	Putin played Trump.
	How did Putin play Trump?
	What did Putin get out of Trump?
	Oh, well, you know, Trump clapped when he saw Putin.
	Trump shook his hand.
	All of this is like juvenile idiocy.
	All you have to do is flash back to a very tense moment when Gorbachev came to Washington, Reagan clapped, Reagan shook his hand.
	Reagan embraced Gorbachev, which Trump didn't do with Putin.
	The idea here is that you are dealing at a human level, and the human level cannot be subtracted.
	Many people, in fact, old Reagan, don't you understand Gorbachev?
	It's not about his human qualities and not about yes, it is about his human qualities.
	Those qualities are not the end of the matter, but they are part of the matter.
	And human beings make decisions.
	Decisions aren't made in some abstraction.
	Yes, they are made on the basis of national interests, but they are also made by human beings.
	I think the Europeans saw that Trump is very sincere about trying to solve this conflict.
	And some of the European hostility toward Trump that is so endemic over there, I think, melted at this meeting.
	So let's talk about some of the new features that we noticed at this meeting.
	And there's a good article on In Epoch Times that lists some of these unique characteristics of this meeting, and I want to mention them and then comment on them.
	The first one.
	Security guarantee.
	So Trump now says, and I think for the first time with a certain kind of clarity, yeah, we, the United States, are willing to be part of helping to guarantee Ukraine's security.
	Now let's be clear what this doesn't mean.
	The United States is not committing any troops, this is not only the United States is not only not letting Ukraine into NATO, but is going to keep Ukraine out of NATO.
	But that being said, if the Europeans create a consortium to help protect Ukraine, the United States is willing to be part of that.
	That's the security guarantee part.
	I think the Europeans were really happy to hear that, and some of them said so.
	Number two, Trump and Zelensky were not at odds.
	Remember the last time this happened, Zelensky came and JD Vance kind of gave him a fairly severe and pungent tongue lashing.
	In this case, you didn't have that.
	Zelensky actually wore well, he was weirdly dressed.
	He's a weird guy, former like dancer, and so he's a freakish individual.
	But apparently he had a kind of special outfit made for this meeting.
	What I was telling was there's an article in Politico that says Zelensky is going to be wearing a new outfit for this meeting, his designer said.
	So Zelensky evidently has a designer.
	This is by the way one of the benefits from getting into a war and getting all these countries to send you money.
	You can now afford to do things that you wouldn't be able to do ordinarily in your own society.
	And one of those apparently is to have a personal designer.
	But nevertheless, the tone between Trump and Zelensky was more genial, more friendly than it was the last time.
	Number three, the focus is no longer on a ceasefire, it's on a peace deal.
	So what does a ceasefire mean?
	You have two guys or they're punching each other, they go ceasefire until seven PM, we're not going to fight anymore.
	A ceasefire does not resolve any issues, but it just creates a break, usually a very temporary break in the fighting, after which the fighting can easily resume.
	A peace deal, on the other hand, is a way of making a negotiation and saying, All right, we've settled our issue, I'll give you this, you give me that.
	And Trump basically goes, I like the concept of a ceasefire because you stops the killing, but guess what?
	We can have a deal.
	And even if the fighting is going on, we can still work out a deal.
	Number four, Territorial swaps Now what does this actually mean?
	Well, what it means is that Russia has retaken the Crimea, which was part of Ukraine, and Russia has no intention of giving it back, they're not going to give it back, and I think Trump has come to the recognition as frankly as anyone else who has taken a look at the situation that Crimea was in fact part of Russia and it was annexed in twenty fourteen.
	By the way, Obama helped with that annexation process.
	That is not going back to Ukraine.
	It's now, you could say, permanently or semi permanently part of Russia.
	The other problem, and this is maybe a more pressing problem, is that the eastern European country of Ukraine has been facing some pretty heavy losses in an area called the Donbass, and this is a Russian-speaking region of eastern Ukraine.
	So it's the Russian-speaking part of Ukraine that abuts against Russia.
	And it's largely under Russian control now.
	And I think Putin's going to be very reluctant to give it up.
	So this creates an awkward situation.
	In fact, I think here is the potential obstacle to any kind of peace deal because essentially what does a peace deal mean?
	Russia is going to want to hold on to territory and not give it up.
	Now will Russia be willing to give something else up, some other land somewhere else in return?
	Maybe, but chances are if they give up any land at all, and if I know Putin, he's not going to want to give up any land at all.
	He's going to say, well, listen, we took back what's rightfully ours.
	We took back a Russian speaking area of Ukraine, and quite frankly, we fought you, you lost, and that's that.
	So here is a potential area where they could.
	where there could be a complete breakdown.
	But on the other hand, Ukraine is going to have to make a decision.
	I think Trump is right when he says this is kind of in the hands of Ukraine.
	Whether Ukraine is willing to give up some of that land on the grounds that, listen, guess what?
	We got into this fight.
	Yes, Russia did invade, but the invasion was not without provocation.
	I think this is the complex truth of the matter.
	Putin is responsible for the invasion.
	In that sense, he started it.
	But he didn't start it in the sense that the underlying issues that led to the invasion, that was not started by Putin.
	That was started to some degree by Ukraine with a kind of egging on the West.
	Hey, go poke the bear, go poke the bear, go poke the bear, and then Ukraine poke the bear, and then the bear lashed out and landed a massive blow on Ukraine and we're living with the effects of that.
	Finally, number five, trilateral possibilities, the next step, Trump has made it very clear, okay, I've met with Putin, I've met with Zelensky now and his troop of European allies, but we're going to have to have a meeting between Putin and Zelensky.
	And Debbie was like, it appears like, you know, Zelensky wants Trump to be there.
	that Trump is like the big man in the room who can stand up to Putin.
	And I think this is actually true that Putin respects Trump.
	Putin probably doesn't respect Zelensky all that much, but he does respect Trump.
	And when Trump says that, you know, I think Putin wants to do a deal because of me, there is an element of truth to it.
	Now, it doesn't mean that Putin is so impressed by Trump's personality, but I think what it does mean is that Russia has larger, longer term objectives with the United States.
	They would like to see improvements of trade.
	They might like to see deals that involve oil.
	They might like to see rare metals and rare earth negotiations, cooperation on issues of technology.
	So there is to put it bluntly, bigger fish to fry for Putin than this small, very tiny country of Ukraine.
	And Putin might figure, listen, I'm willing to take a deal over here that's not I could probably get a better deal just by beating them up.
	But I'll take a deal over here because I'm able to make larger headway with the United States.
	And in some ways, I'll earn Trump's gratitude for helping to resolve a massive conflict on the global stage.
	Trump will get a lot of credit and this will open up real possibilities for cooperation between Russia and the United States.
	That I think is actually a smart way to think.
	Putin is a very smart guy.
	He's probably thinking along these lines already.
	And that is the hopeful side of how an agreement could take place.
	It takes place not because Putin wants to give up very much on his side.
	He doesn't really have to, but because Putin has other things in mind, other gains that he can secure in dealing with the United States.
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	Hey, there's an ongoing divide or rift between Trump and the Federal Reserve, and is that putting us behind the curve again?
	Can the Fed take the right action at the right time?
	Are we going to be looking at a potential economic slowdown or slump?
	And hey, what does that mean for your savings?
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	Guys, I'm delighted to welcome to the podcast a friend.
	It's Carmen Maria Montiel.
	She has actually had a journey that somewhat tracks my wife Debbie.
	She is a Venezuelan by birth.
	She is a Texan and an American by choice.
	She was actually crowned Miss Venezuela, Miss South America.
	She was second runner up in Miss Universe 1984.
	She went on to a career.
	Her family had a medical practice in Houston.
	She has raised a her three children.
	She's witnessed the collapse of Venezuela under socialism, and now she is running for Congress in Texas, Texas District 18.
	Her website is Carmen four, the number for congress dot com.
	You can follow her on X at Carmen for Congress.
	Carmen Maria, thank you for joining me.
	I really appreciate it.
	I know you just got back from Japan, and you're probably feeling some major jet lag.
	How was that trip?
	Well, it was fantastic.
	I spend with my children is treasure.
	So it was an incredible experience and a lot of togetherness that now they're in college is hard to come by.
	Yeah.
	I, you know, I've never been to Japan and, uh, but it just seems like a just a very unique and, uh, and powerful culture.
	I mean, I've noticed over the years that you have these terrible tsunamis that will hit Japan, but, you know, not a word of complaint.
	Those guys just get about rebuilding their country and their society.
	They've had a difficult economy for thirty years.
	But again, they have they seem to be have this stiff upper lip, as we used to call it, in which you endure suffering without making a lot of noise over it.
	But you will be impressed to learn that they're starting to have problems with illegal immigration.
	So this is a worldwide problem.
	And in the last election, the communists were almost close.
	And their propaganda was to put the Japanese flag with an axe.
	And of course, that didn't went well with the Japanese because it was like they want to be in power, but they hate the country.
	So they're starting all facing incredibly enough to learn.
	Carmen Maria, talk a little bit about your experience in Venezuela, but also getting out, because how did you come face to face?
	So how did you come to see close up the collapse of socialism?
	And I ask this because, of course, as you know, you have Mom Dani running now in New York.
	There seems to be a explicit embrace of socialism by at least certain quarters of the left, even if the democratic leadership is nervous about it.
	And Venezuela to me is a laboratory experiment.
	in socialism and look where look how that ended up you know like you said i have concluded that venezuela was the experiment of how to take over the United States of America because knowing our history you know a rich country a country that was on the road to development we were not a third world country you know all the the companies have their headquarters for Latin America in Venezuela.
	It was a wall-driven country, a constitution very similar to the United States.
	And suddenly, you know, this started like United States years before.
	And I remember being little, my father telling me, you know, bureaucracy and corruption is destroying this country.
	And suddenly when I came here as a student, you know, I came here as a student.
	I'm a journalist also in a work in Telemundo as an encore woman.
	And that's when I started seeing the resemblance.
	And while being here as a student, I was not able to go back because the situation in Venezuela started to go down and my father was the one that said you better stay.
	And my father always pushed us to come here to United States, that and stay because he saw it coming.
	And, you know, I'm from Maracaibo, which is next door to Colombia.
	And when illegal immigration started in the 70s, I, you know, we in Maracaibo experienced firsthand the damage.
	of illegal immigration, you know, the crime went up, the drug problem, and that little by little expanded to the rest of the country.
	And I always remember when I moved to Caracas that I was eight years old, Caracas was beautiful with the hills, the green hills, and you could drive and sell the beautiful home.
	As I grew up, the hills were completely, you know, laminated with ranchos, how we call it in Venezuela.
	And everybody started to build walls in front of their homes because the crime spread it throughout the country.
	And that was just the beginning of everything.
	And it takes years.
	And that's what we're experiencing right now in Venezuela.
	By the time I came to the United States as a student, I remember, because I was 23 years old, how everybody in my generation were getting married and they couldn't afford to buy a house.
	They were staying with their parents.
	And that's exactly what we're living at this time, at this point in the United States.
	And now carmen maria you are in in america you're in texas and uh you are running for Congress in an area that is, you know, not bright red, to put it mildly.
	It's an area that has traditionally been one won by the Democrats.
	Now, before we talk about the race, I want to ask you to comment on this redistricting controversy.
	As you know, the Texas Democrats made their getaway.
	They made a big flamboyant press splash.
	They met with Kathy Hochul in New York and Pritzker.
	I believe Obama made a phone call to them where he gave them his usual song and dance routine.
	And now, evidently, he's paying for it.
	That's right.
	Beto was claiming to bankroll this from some pack of his.
	And apparently the Texas Democrats are now back and they're not going to be able to stop the redistricting, but they're claiming victory because they think that they've inspired some national resistance to what they claim is a rigging of democracy as if to say that Texas is the first state in the country, perhaps of all time, that is doing some kind of gerrymandering.
	Of course, Democrats have been doing this for a long time.
	Talk about that.
	Well, let me tell you, the rules are okay when they use it and abuse it, but when we Republicans use it, it's wrong.
	Gerrymandering is their creation.
	I don't agree with gerrymandering.
	I don't think gerrymandering is good for democracy because you're just drawing districts to favor one party or the other.
	I think the district should be round or square or adapt to the shape of the state, but should not be gerrymandering.
	Now, they have used it and abused it.
	For example, here in Harris County, after the last census, the commissioners court gerrymandering, the Harris County Commissioners court, and only left one seat for the Republicans.
	And now they have the majority and that was okay.
	And when California did it, that was okay.
	And when we do it, because Texas have changed and the majority of the population in Texas are Latinos.
	And now Latinos have realized what I always say, we are conservative.
	The Latinos were duped by the Democrats and now they realize the reality and are voting for conservative, for Republicans.
	So we have to gerrymandering, which is their rules, to adapt to the reality of Texas.
	And that's going to happen.
	They cannot.
	And if they keep complaining, my proposal is let's just completely erase gerrymandering and redo all the districts to square around.
	Yeah, I mean, I've pointed out in the podcast that you've got a number of states where Republicans are 40%, 45% of the population, and yet in the whole state, they don't have a single Republican representative.
	And so the Democrats not even a single seat.
	And so it seems like Texas is almost late to the party in using the same rules and playing the same games that the Democrats play.
	Let's talk about your district.
	What is the kind of ethnic composition of it?
	Talk about how you have, what are the issues that are defining the district and what is your path to victory?
	Well, you know, this district after the 2020 census became a true kind of a true representation of the demographics of Houston and Harris County, which is 45 percent Latino.
	So the district right now is 45 percent Latino and then 30 around.
	around 31% black and 17% white and 3% Asian and then a little bit of everything.
	The reality of Houston and Harris County is the number one group in population around 45 to 48 are Latinos, then whites, then blacks and then Asians and then a little bit of everything because you know we have people from all over the world.
	So that's why I run this district in 2022 and now again that is vacant because the majority of the population are Latinos.
	Latinos are voting conservative and in the last election, 56% of the new voters registered were Latinos.
	So that's why that's my path to victory.
	Not only that, we have seen that men, black men are voting more and more for the Republican Party.
	Historically, this district, in every election, the percentage of vote towards the Republicans grow.
	And being what we're living right now, let's be realistic.
	The Democrats have gone completely crazy.
	You know, nobody can agree to the fact that we just want open borders allowing criminals to come you know to to our cities to to rape and mortar our people okay to to have an economy that no longer like just told you now the young people cannot afford to buy a house you know our education is failing We are in a city here in Houston that we have the number one medical center in the world and
	our people in my district have a hard time getting access to health care.
	So it's common sense.
	People do not want one.
	People don't want boys in little girls' bathrooms or boys competing against girls.
	You know, it's just anatomy, plain anatomy.
	We cannot level off with a man.
	That's a reality.
	So common sense is what's finally getting to the people and the pocket and families and finally even the black community is realizing that the Democrats destroy their families.
	And that's what I'm, my campaign is about faith, family, economic opportunities, education.
	That's what I'm running on they already know me and this is I'm second in the polls right now because I have name recognition and people is going like who can say that like this morning in Boston the governor was saying like oh fighting against Trump because they're fighting crime and and people goes like so you mean you are going for the criminals not for us that's insanity You know,
	Carmen Maria, for a long time, people would kind of assume that if you had immigrants from Cuba, from Venezuela, they would.
	They would be anti communist, anti socialist, they would be conservative.
	But the Mexican Americans, who are the largest group in the Hispanic camp, were habitual Democrats.
	Their parents were Democrats, their grandparents were Democrats.
	But I think what you're saying is that that trend is starting to change.
	Are you finding that your message, you know, even as a quote Venezuelan, is breaking through to Mexican Americans and in that sense bringing the Latino community more toward the Republican camp?
	Well, let me tell you, I always said the reason why Latinos were duped by the Democrats, it's a combination of symbols and semantics.
	In the 80s, I bet you remember this, in the second election of Reagan, the Republicans, we were always blue.
	But in the second election of Reagan, I remember I was in the embassy, in the United States embassy in Venezuela, in that party.
	and looking at the board in the television and see the whole map because remember that election just went red you know for regan and thinking oh my god we lost because i was used to see the republicans being blue, the media flipped the colors.
	And what happened?
	The Republicans didn't complain, didn't fight for their color.
	And you know, worldwide, the color red is the color of communism.
	So when immigrants come to this country and see the Republican Party being the red party, people goes like, hold on a second.
	And the people mistakenly think this is a democratic country.
	No, we're a constitutional republic.
	So they think, oh, well, we're pro-democracy, democracy, and this is the party called the Democrats.
	So that's where the word dupe.
	But as the Democrats have really moved so far to the left and the Latinos are conservative and the Latinos are people are faithful.
	They practice their religion and family is so important to us that that really did it for the Latinos to finally just wake up and say, hold on a second.
	This is not the party that represents us and represent our values.
	And as it has become more difficult for everybody to make a living in this country, and they come, we all came here to, we all wanted to.
	achieve the American dream.
	And as that became harder to achieve, it's the combination of all those things that have made the Latinos realize we were wrong and now we're moving to the right with the Republican Party.
	Well, Carmen Maria, you are a pioneer in this, and I really wish you well in this campaign.
	It would be great to see a candidate with your background sweep the election in what has been a historically blue district.
	Guys, follow Carmen Maria on X at Carmen for Congress, the number four.
	And the website, Carmen for Congress dot com, Carmen Maria Montiel, thank you very much for joining me.
	I appreciate it.
	Thank you very much for having me.
	I'm discussing the personality and leadership of Reagan, and my topic today is a bit of a difficult one for me.
	It's it's Reagan's humor, and it's a difficult topic because Reagan's humor was so characteristically Reagan.
	It was his style, the cocked head, the slight smile, the absolutely.
	impeccable sense of timing and in attempting to relay Reagan's humor, I've got to sort of try and slightly duplicate what Reagan did so you can understand not just Reagan's jokes per se, but kind of what's underlying all that.
	What was Reagan doing with humor that was so effective and in fact kind of rare?
	Now Trump in his own way is also a comedian, but of a completely different kind.
	With Trump, he's just funny in the sense that he is so over the top.
	He has such a unique style.
	He's so bombastic in some respects that you have to laugh, but it's a different type of laughter than you did with Reagan.
	So let's look at Reagan's humor and you'll begin to see its distinctive elements.
	Now Reagan was the master of the one liner and also the master of the anecdote.
	One of his speech writers, a guy named Arambakshian, he goes, I used to spend a lot of time writing funny lines in the president's speeches.
	Then I'd see them taken out by the president in favor of better lines that he would add.
	Reagan himself was his own joke writer.
	You know that many of our comedians aren't really comedians, in fact, some of them aren't funny at all, but they have a big army of joke writers, people like Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel, and so on.
	The joke writers supply them with material, and so to some degree, these are just talking heads who deliver that material, but it's not their material.
	In Reagan's case, it was mostly his own material.
	And you know that somebody's funny when they can be amusing unscripted.
	If somebody's only delivering lines that have been prepared, delivering a kind of rehearsed speech that's one thing, but to be able to deliver lines just basically off the top of your head.
	Now you might have heard something similar in your own background, but to be able to recall it and deliver it.
	So here's Reagan.
	Question, answer session with reporters in nineteen eighty three, he had just had a birthday, reporter goes, How do you feel about being seventy two years old?
	Reagan goes, Well, I think it's fine when you consider the alternative.
	So that's that's Reagan.
	He delivers the line impeccably.
	Here's Reagan and I don't remember if I was at this.
	this event or if someone told me about it, Reagan goes to a pro life dinner at which Peter Grace, Reagan's friend, an entrepreneur, founder of the Grace Company, who headed the Grace Commission on Government Waste, and Peter Grace was speaking before Reagan.
	And he gets up there and he's talking about the urgent need for laws that protect and he means to say fetuses, but he doesn't know, and so he says he wants laws to protect feces.
	And the audience kind of gasps because they realize what he said, but Grace doesn't really catch on.
	And he kind of goes on with his speech and it becomes increasingly embarrassing.
	I was once a feces.
	You were feces and so on.
	And after the dinner, Reagan was apologetically approached by the organizers who said, You know, I hope you weren't embarrassed by what Peter Grace did up there on the podium.
	And Reagan goes, Oh no, he goes, Well, I guess the feces really hit the fan tonight.
	So that's Reagan.
	He's just easy going, he lets it go by him, he totally gets it.
	It's no big deal.
	He enjoyed it as much as the audience did.
	He didn't take too serious a view of it.
	Point to make about Reagan though is that he used humor to communicate pretty fundamental beliefs.
	He also used it to break the ice with world leaders.
	He saw humor as a way to cross national and cultural boundaries.
	And in private, Reagan's jokes were a little more salty.
	They were a little more politically incorrect.
	One of Reagan's favorite jokes, which I used to tell in my younger days when I would speak on college campuses, and it's a joke with a political thrust to it, it has to do with Winston Churchill.
	Winston Churchill stops in London at a hotel.
	It's a function.
	He's about to give a long speech, so he goes, I better stop in the men's room.
	So Churchill goes up to one of the spots and he stands there, and who should walk in but his political rival, the socialist, Clement Adley?
	And to Churchill's surprise, what Adley does is even though it's kind of empty in the restroom, he comes and stands right next to Churchill.
	So Churchill kind of looks over like, you know, what are you doing?
	And Adley goes, My Winston, are we being a little modest?
	And Churchill goes, not at all, Clement.
	It's just that whenever you see something that is large and private and working well, you want to nationalize it.
	So this is a joke that is making fun of socialism.
	And Reagan loved it.
	Reagan liked to tell it, Reagan was really good at it.
	He also liked to tell some ethnic jokes, but he realized once he became president he shouldn't be doing that.
	Reagan in this sense was not like Trump.
	Trump, I think, has the view that unfiltered is the best approach.
	And for Trump, breaking the taboo is a good way to go.
	Reagan, on the other hand, did respect taboos and boundaries.
	But he did occasionally cross them in a very strategic way.
	When Reagan was declaiming and talking against the bureaucracy, he would talk about, he joke about this fellow at the Bureau of Indian Affairs who was spotted like sobbing at his desk.
	And when people asked him like, Why are you crying?
	He goes, Oh, my Indian died.
	So this is, you know, not exactly in the best taste, perhaps, but notice that the butt of the joke is not the Indian.
	The butt of the joke is the bureaucrat.
	But Reagan loved to make jokes at the bureaucrat's expense.
	Here's another Reagan story.
	This gives you an idea of the kind of thing that Reagan found funny.
	You have two campers hiking in the woods, suddenly they spot a grizzly bear, and the grizzly bear starts charging right toward them.
	So one of the guys reaches into his backpack and quickly starts putting on his running shoes.
	And his friend goes, What are you doing?
	You can't possibly outrun a grizzly.
	And the guy says, I don't have to outrun the you.
	So Reagan here is telling a joke about human nature.
	And Reagan understood that human nature has kind of this dark side.
	It purports to be about noble things, but it very often has to protect its own survival.
	It has to compete in a little bit of a doggy dog world against other people.
	So this is Reagan's philosophical disposition.
	His philosophical disposition is ironically cheerful because Reagan had a dark view of human nature.
	Now this seems odd, right?
	Why would you be?
	You think if you have a dark view of human nature, you would be really gloomy.
	And if you had an optimistic view of human nature, you would be really cheerful.
	But this is not the case.
	If you have an optimistic view of human nature, you are constantly getting slapped in the face by reality.
	You expect people to act out of nobler motives, you realize that they're acting out of self interest, they're acting out of narrow mindedness, they're looking out for themselves, and you become disappointed, dejected, and you become angry.
	And this actually might help to explain some of the rage that we see on the left.
	driven by a false expectation about human nature.
	And now look at the opposite side of that coin, which is that if you have a low view of human nature, you're like, okay, well, I expect people to act selfishly.
	That doesn't surprise me.
	What else would people do?
	That's the norm.
	If someone acts altruistically or someone acts sacrificially, well, that's impressive because that is not in fact the characteristic bent of human nature.
	So if somebody has low expectations because they have a pessimistic view of human nature, they're pleasantly surprised when things don't turn out so to be quite as congenitally wicked and depraved as you expect them to be,
	this is by the way also my disposition, which is to say the bent view of human nature, what Emmanuel Kant calls the crooked timber of humanity.
	When you have that view of human nature, you have relatively moderated expectations of the way that things are going to turn out.
	We're going to make America great again.
	Well, we'll do pretty well if we could make America a little better than it is now.
	We may not be able to make it as great as it was in nineteen fifty or eighteen ninety for that matter.
	That project might not succeed.
	I hope it does, but it might not succeed.
	But in a way, you'll see success.
	Reagan was a success because he made the country a lot better.
	Did that project hold permanently?
	No, I would say basically the Reagan Revolution lasted from nineteen eighty to two thousand eight when Obama was elected.
	Obama set about with a vengeance to undo what Reagan had done.
	And to some degree, he was able to undo at least some of it.
	So nothing is permanent., victories are fragile and temporary, but nevertheless, if Trump can succeed over two terms in really fixing a lot of the most egregious problems we have in front of us, making the country better, improving the prospects of people who haven't seen generational improvement in their lives for a long time, this alone will be a success.
	And the longer that we can hold on to it, the better.

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